Upscale offices receive people again and animate the rental sector

The return to face-to-face work has gained momentum in recent months with the advance of vaccination against Covid-19 and feeds the expectation of the office rental sector in São Paulo for a recovery.

The vacancy rate of high-end offices in the city closed the third quarter at 25.9%, an increase of 1 percentage point compared to the second quarter and 6.5 percentage points compared to a year ago, indicates a survey carried out by the consultancy. real estate JLL.

A market considered to be in equilibrium has a vacancy rate of around 15%, explains Yara Matsuyama, director of office leasing at JLL. On top of that, homeowners need to be flexible in attracting clientele.

Despite the high vacancy in the city’s average, there are regions that are going through a different time. This is the case of Itaim Bibi and Jardins, districts in the west side of São Paulo where vacancy rates are at 0% and 1%, respectively, according to JLL data.

According to Matsuyama, these are areas with little volume of supply, which explains the null vacancy. Nearby and even more valued regions are also doing well.

The area around Avenida Juscelino Kubitscheck has 8% vacancy, while Faria Lima has 16% vacancy. These are the regions with the most expensive square meter in the city for commercial leasing, around R$ 180. The city average for high-end is R$ 93.60.

The JLL director says that the type of occupation in each area helps explain the disparate vacancy results. The region of Berrini and Chucri Zaidan, in the south zone, has more smaller companies and in the service sector, which suffered from the pandemic, which is reflected in the 33% of available area.

In the last year, new buildings were also delivered there, such as three towers of the Parque da Cidade project, which helped to increase the available space.

Faria Lima, on the other hand, is mainly sought after by technology, law and financial market businesses, which have more robust cash at the moment and are able to keep the office leased even with the teams at home.

“These companies know that if they return to Faria Lima and want to return in 6 or 12 months, they may not find it available, then they will hold back, because in the long term the office will be important”, says Fernando Didziakas, managing partner of the Buildings consultancy.

About five kilometers away, Avenida Paulista was another region hit by the wave of discards. If the offices are considered beyond the high standard, the region lost around 190,000 m² of area since last year, according to him.

Didziakas points out that the forecast for delivery of new corporate slabs in the city in 2022 and 2023 is reduced, compared to the stock added in 2020 and this year. The perspective is that around 300,000 m² will be added, while 480,000 m² of new high-end offices have arrived in the São Paulo market since 2020, which should facilitate the reduction of office vacancy.

In 2019, the city absorbed around 290,000 new m² of corporate area, says Didziakas, but it would be very optimistic to expect the same for 2022. “There are positive signs, but we will not be at cruising speed, considering that there will be a presidential election and that the economic scenario is more worrying,” he says.

The net absorption in the city, that is, the difference between the new stock delivered and the area that was returned, was negative in the third quarter, at 20,000 m², according to JLL, but it was much worse: it closed the first quarter negative in 80 thousand m², and the second in 40 thousand m².

“[A absorção] it won’t be enough to close the year with a positive accumulated balance, but it shows that there is improvement happening and that we can soon get out of this more difficult moment”, says Matsuyama, from JLL.

Business moves contributed to this. Petlove&Co, ecommerce for pets, is leaving a space of 1,600 m² at CENU (United Nations Business Center), in the Berrini region, to occupy an area of ​​almost 3,700 m² in another tower in the same development.

During the pandemic, the company bought other businesses, such as DogHero, in services for pets, and Vetus, in the management of petshops and veterinary clinics, and the current office was small for 600 employees in the administrative area, says Ricardo Rios, director of human resources. The change of workplace is expected to take place next month.

Despite being larger, the new space was not designed to receive all employees at the same time — the maximum capacity is 450 people. “We’re going to the hybrid model, we’ve already planned the office so that everyone isn’t there,” explains Rios.

The director analyzes that the moment chosen by Petlove to make this change was advantageous for them. “We were right on the date, because it gave us not only conditions to make a good negotiation, but also time to design the office in accordance with this new reality.”

The commercial office sector, which are the smallest offices, also faces high vacancy, around 20%, according to Didziakas. He analyzes that this type of office should suffer more than the segment of corporate slabs in the long term, as it has a very dispersed offer.

“There will always be a lawyer or architect to occupy 30 or 60 m², there will not be a 100% vacancy, but the occupancy will be lower”, he says.

Logistical condominium sees search grow with high online purchases

While the office sector tries to recover from the pandemic, the high-end logistics condominium segment benefited from the increase in virtual purchases in the period and has a falling vacancy rate.

In Brazil, according to JLL, this rate is at 10.33%, a drop of 5.95 percentage points over the third quarter of last year.

São Paulo is the state that concentrates most of this infrastructure, mainly in the metropolitan region of the capital and at the junction of the Bandeirantes and Anhanguera highways, explains André Romano, manager of the consultancy’s industrial and logistics division.

The available and leased area in the state continues to grow. According to data from the Newmark consultancy, 146 thousand m² of industrial and logistics condominiums were delivered in the state in the third quarter, with emphasis on the regions of Cajamar and Guarulhos, and 437,000 m² were already leased in the year.

Of this total, 46% went to ecommerce companies, and 24% went to the logistics, transport and product distribution sector.

According to Romano, there is an upward movement in demand for logistics condominiums in other states as well. “Everyone is realizing that there is an ocean to navigate in the rest of Brazil, and what accelerated this was the pandemic, because everyone was forced to shop online,” he says.

Even with the normalization of the functioning of physical commerce, the sector does not foresee a drop in demand. “Online consumption becomes a habit, and the participation of ecommerce in retail trade has room to grow.”

Next year should bring an increase of 2.5 million in the offer of condominiums. Romano’s expectation is that there will be at least two more years of continuous increase in the net absorption of these areas.